


An Ode to Joanna McCoy

by sarkany



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, background Spirk, or just joanna, women of star trek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 02:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5850310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarkany/pseuds/sarkany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She grew up hearing about all the horrid ways human girls can die in space if they don’t finish their milk. She can’t help but hate her Daddy, just a little.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ode to Joanna McCoy

**Author's Note:**

> I love off-focus tertiary characters. This is my tribute to Joanna McCoy, daughter to the best doctor of the 'Fleet and the scariest lawyer on the East Coast, goddaughter to James T Kirk, and overall badass.

Joanna’s daddy is in Starfleet. Sometimes when he calls, she slams her bedroom door and refuses to come out. It’s only when Mommy turns from annoyed to worried that she drags her toes slowly along carpet and into the living room. Daddy won’t even be mad at her, and that’s what makes her talk to her knees, fingers worrying the fraying hem of her jeans, trying her best not to sniffle too loudly. 

She’s all of six and a big girl. She knows that Daddy loves her more than sweet tea in the summer, even if he isn't here to make their special honey-lemon-and-sugar tea just the way she likes it. So she mostly finishes her homework on time and brags to her classmates about how much awesomer her Daddy is than anyone elses’. Starfleet is cool now, with the new Holovid and Tommy’s interactive action figures (Mrs. Miller hates them because they can talk, and everybody would rather play with Captain Kirk and the USS Kelvin than learning maths.)

She grew up hearing about all the horrid ways human girls can die in space if they don’t finish their milk. She can’t help but hate her Daddy, just a little. 

***

It’s Christmas break and she’s excited. Cookies and presents and no homework and her Daddy’s coming home! She gets up extra early on the 21st just in case he arrives early. The 25th time she runs to the parlor windows, a garish turquoise car _with rubber wheels_ finally pulls up in front of their house. Joanna is out the door and pelting down the driveway before Mommy even makes it out of the study.

Daddy laughs and spins her around in dizzy circles. He smells different, less like biotic spray and more like motor oil. Over his shoulder, a strange man grins at her and slouches against the car.

“Bones,” he laughs, “someone is glad to see you!” 

“Who is Bones? Is it your dog? Did you bring your dog? Can I pet it? Mommy hates dogs, she says they get fur everywhere and eat shoes and that’s why I can’t have one,” she finishes in a rush because the man is doubled over, red-faced and wheezing, and definitely not listening to her.

She’s not too worried about him because Daddy is a doctor, and he isn’t rushing over in concern. He just stands there, longsuffering. “Jim,” he says.

“Bones,” Jim mimics back.

Joanna frowns at him because even if Daddy has a lot of names (Daddy, Len, Dr. McCoy, _Leonard Horatio McCoy_ ), she’s pretty sure “Bones” isn’t one of them. Maybe Jim is stupid, and Daddy just needs to be nice to him because even if someone is different, doesn’t mean she gets to be mean. She's gotta be extra nice since everything is harder for them.

It turns out Jim drives honest-to-god cars that run on exploding gas, is allergic to shellfish ( _-and half the goddamn universe” “Len, don’t swear in front of Jo”_ ), and reads 20th century literature for fun. Over dinner, she learns more about Jim than about all of Mommy’s boyfriends combined. 

Joanna resents Jim for four days because Daddy will crack sideways jokes with him instead of properly being a knight during playtime or he'll make a cup of tea for Jim and not just for the two of them. On the fifth day, she rips eye-searingly pink wrapping paper off her present and falls in love.

She names her Bones, because Bones is obviously a dog name and not a person name, and runs her fingers over her silky back. Mommy can’t even complain because underneath the synth-fur, Bones is all whirring mechanical parts and clever programming.

In the background, Mommy says, “Jim you shouldn’t have. We can’t possibly accept-“

“Nonsense,” he says, “If it makes you feel any better, the only thing I paid for that was for the fur and the metal.”

Bones whirrs and butts at her hand, affectionate.

**

Joanna McCoy is not stupid. Her Mom is the best attorney in Georgia, and her Dad is (was) the best trauma surgeon on the whole East Coast. She grew up on legalese and illegible biochemical scribblings, and her parents thought that appropriate reading material for toddlers involved textbooks and diagrams.

She sees the way her father stares at Uncle Jim, mouth twitched up as if in amusement, always looking away before he notices. But the moment always passes, and after that terrifying month without contact, the Enterprise lands amidst a media frenzy. 

Even on screen, Uncle Jim stands a tad too close to his First Officer.

***

She’s bringing Jason to meet her mom today. She isn’t at all nervous (that’s a lie. Her palms are damp and she couldn’t pay attention at all in class, not even geology) until she sees a gorgeous red antique car in the garage. Then, her stomach drops to her knees because this going to end _so not wellI_.

She opens the front door to see the entire alpha bridge crew of the USS Enterprise assembled in her living room, still in their yellow-blue-red uniforms. Beside her, Jason gapes because Captain Kirk and Commander Spock make the news about once a month, and her godparents are kind of dicks.

Kirk smirks at her incoherent splutter of outrage and protest, but he mostly watches Jason with frightfully cold eyes.

“Dad!” she half shrieks. 

He shrugs and tips his dark head at Uncle Jim, “You try stopping this one. Not that I wanted to, mind you.” He finishes his drink and _thunks_ it rather decisively on the coffee table.

That seems to snap Jason out of his stupor because he suddenly seems to realize that there are seven pairs of eyes on him and instead of facing Mrs. McCoy, he’s now facing Mrs. McCoy and the crew that had once reduced five Kinglon warbirds into so much space debris. (Mrs. McCoy is scarier than the rest of them combined, but boys are dumb.)

It’s almost comical how fast he goes from amazed awe to blanching horror except it’s really, really not.

Dinner is excruciatingly awkward.

She’s 15, Jason is her first boyfriend, and Captain James Tiberius Kirk is slowly instilling the fear of god into him.

**

He breaks up with her a week later. She sends Kirk, her father, Commander Spock, and even Keenser for good measure an angry email and ignores their calls for 48 hours. (She doesn’t email Scotty because Scotty is insane. Well, more insane than everyone else, and needs to be shouted at or put under the threat of imminent death before he starts to make sense.)

Jason spends the mext day jumping at shadows. The morning after that (and several more furious emails later), she finds a slim PADD wrapped neatly with a bow in her locker. _Men_ , she thinks disparagingly. _One day, Uncle Jim will learn that affection cannot be bought by shiny electronics_. Nonetheless, she smiles to herself through her Literature class. Miriam pokes her annoyingly halfway through reading _Macbeth_ and demands to know what Jason did to have her smiling like that, _goddamnit Jo, I didnt ferry notes like it was a 21st century courtship to be kept out of the loop!_. She sends a wave to Miriam's PADD because Mr. Becker is giving them a stinkeye, _That would be telling_. Her new PADD has the newest version of _Space Bots: Defender Version_ , which isn’t even out of beta.

**

She blearily pads downstairs, not registering the low susurrus of voices until she stops dead to see Jim and Spock kissing over a bowl of batter. Jim pulls back and murmurs something gravelly and Vulcan-harsh.

As quietly as she can, she slips back into the living room and noisily walks back into the dining room. In the kitchen, they are efficiently flipping pancakes and breaking eggs to scramble.

“Morning,” Jim greets, cheerfully with not an ounce of shiftiness. His hair has been carefully smoothed down except for one large tuft (the approximate size of a Vulcan handful) in the back.

**

She once makes the mistake of entering their room before knocking. Don’t get her wrong, both of them and gorgeous and she’d totally hit that except for the bit that they’re her uncles and practically RAISED HER. Like, _ew_. 

She bursts inside, hands sending white flares on the screen of her PADD. She wants them to know first because, again, they practically raised her and because both of her parents are decidedly not morning people. Then, she is scarred for life, but hey, who would have guessed that Captain Kirk bottoms?

**

She wakes up to her roommate frantically shaking her shoulder. A quick glance at the chronometer reveals that it’s already 0644. If they sprint, they’ll barely have enough time to sprint across commons and into Zizeck Hall.

She will cheerfully flay and eviscerate whoever decided to make Advanced Tactics mandatory for all ship-bound officers and that the only logical time to offer the course was at seven in the bloody morning. She slides into a seat in the back just before the bot automatically sweeps for IDs and bio-signatures. Her high school boyfriend had taught her how to circumvent the attendance bots, but she suspects that StarFleet has better security than some backwater high school in Georgia.

She’s barely awake and thus can be excused from noticing the back of a familiar blond head until her roommate sighs, “Isn’t he dreamy.”

Then, her head snaps up to take in the lustful gazes of the cadets of at least three-fourths of the lecture hall. Standing at the front of the room in tight regulation backs is Captain Kirk himself. 

He bounces a bit on his feet, way to energetic for this early in the morning, and Joanna just knows that at least half the class will show up for no other reason just to see him, attendance bots or not. 

She had known that he was taking a semesters leave from duty while the Enterprise was repaired, had known that the Academy had desperately wanted him to teach impressionable future generations of officers, but she failed to understand how that translated into him teaching her first class at Starfleet.

Somewhere, someone was laughing at her. 

**

His office hours are ridiculous. Four in the morning, but disgustingly popular. She’s almost sure that office hours that early are illegal, but he’s married to a Vulcan so there’s probably a clever loophole somewhere.

It also turns that that the attendance bots of Advanced Tactics are nearly impossible to hack. She remembers Bones, who was somehow almost exactly like a real dog for all that he was programmed and an indulgent Spock telling her about the Kobayashi Maru. She manfully suppresses the urge to scream and tear her hair out. Although on the bright side, if she ever does manage to hack the bots, when Jim finds out (and he will find out because he is married to a scary Vulcan), at least he won’t bring her up on charges of academic dishonestly. Hypocrisy and all that.

**

Halfway through the semester, her classmates clue into the fact that she’s the daughter of Leonard McCoy and honorary goddaughter of the Captain James T Kirk of the USS Enterprise, flagship of the entire goddamned fleet and most badass ship of the ‘verse. She’s not sure what took them so long, her last name is McCoy and she goes out to lunch with at least one member of the bridge crew per week.

Suddenly, she becomes something of a minor celebrity on campus. Instead of “Johanna McCoy, engineer” she’s introduced as “Johanna McCoy, daughter of the McCoy on the Enterprise, honorary niece of Captain Kirk and Cmdr Spock.”

She doesn’t really mind, except how people’s eyes widen and they become more polite and irritatingly ingratiating all at once. Her RA has a brother serving as a petty officer aboard the ship and is angling to get assigned to the ship once she’s completely refitted. He brings her cookies (and books preloaded into datachips once he realises what an utter nerd she is) about once a week. The worst is the single Vulcan in her Ethics class, who sneaks glances at her for a month before pressing some sort of clay pot into her hands and fleeing. 

Spock stares at the pot in silence long enough for her to grow nervous that the intricate designs along the sides represent Vulcan pornography or something. She’s been to the Met, and if the Greeks could put homoerotic iconography on their vases, it’s totally possible that Vulcans do too. Although come to think of it, long exposure to Jim Kirk ought to cure any last ounce of shock at anything remotely sexual. Maybe it’s secretly a love sonnet that’s causing the does-not-compute Spockface.

Then, Spock shrugs back to life and does something complicated to the pot’s sides that causes a panel to pop open.

He extricates a cookie and hands it to her.  
Turns out it was a cookie jar. Vulcans are friggen _weird_.

**Author's Note:**

> In interest of full disclosure, I first started writing this sometime around 2013, and I periodically go through my word doc and add/tweak lines. I figured if I didn't post this now, it would remain buried in my writing folder for the foreseeable future. That said, if I ever do find any time and motivation, this will hopefully become something much longer because Joanna is bae and everybody needs a 140k gen fic about her.
> 
> Please let me know which bits worked for you and which didn't! I've read this fic enough times that I'm no longer sure which bits are funny anymore...


End file.
